Police and a Civilized Society

Officers from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office display their unmanned aerial vehicle in Spring, Texas. Photo: Vanguard Defense Industries

Restaging a well-known painting by Norman Rockwell. Photo: (unknown artist)

Enforcing the rule of law is, of course, one of the main requirements of a free and civilized society. We understand that society includes those who have no respect for others or for the rule of law, and there must be a system in place to deal with them. The question is – where do we draw the line between the legitimate need for civilian law enforcement and the heavily-armed paramilitary forces that have now become routine in much of what used to be “the Land of The Free”?

There is a huge difference between the mission of the United States Marine Corps in Afghanistan and a local police department, but you wouldn’t know it from the way many police departments are now being outfitted. The military essentially exists to kill people and break things. Their mission is to take and hold territory with violence or the threat of violence. A civilian police force, on the other hand, should have as its mission the enforcement of laws as an integral part of the community. There is no way that men outfitted as the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Officers shown above could possibly be considered “part of the community”. Everything about their appearance and their equipment is designed to set them apart from those they are assigned to protect.

We are left with only two choices to explain this trend:

1. We have truly become a Police State and the role of the police is no longer enforcing the rule of law in a civilized society, but serving as enforcers for an out-of-control government of tyrants.
2. There are elements of our society that no longer meet the working definition of civilized human beings and must be dealt with as animals or an invading army of barbarians.

Neither choice is a pleasant one to consider.

In an ironic follow-up to this post, The Examiner reported on March 4, 2012, that the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office staged a photo-op to showcase their new high-tech paramilitary equipment. We’ll quote directly from the Examiner article:

As the sheriff’s SWAT team suited up with lots of firepower and their armored vehicle known as the “Bearcat,” a prototype drone from Vanguard Defense Industries took off for pictures of all the police action. It was basically a photo opportunity, according to those in attendance.

Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said his company’s prototype drone was flying about 18-feet off the ground when it started having trouble. It’s designed to go into an auto shutdown mode, according to Buscher, but when it was coming down the drone crashed into the SWAT team’s armored vehicle.

Fortunately for the heavily armed “Officer Friendlies”, they were safe inside their armored personnel carrier. Had this happened in “real life”, I suspect that persons in the area would likely not be so well protected.